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The 2017 release of After Effects CC allows you to create dynamic, visually stunning motion graphics and visual effects wherever inspiration strikes. After Effects now allows you to seamlessly collaborate with editors through Team Projects and shared templates, quickly and easily create 3D compositions, instantly playback scenes without caching, and use more GPU-accelerated effects in your composition.

After Effects CC 2017.0.2 | January 2017 update

The January update of After Effects CC 2017.0.2 offers features to convert a Team Project to a local project and edit a Team Project video layer with audio in Adobe Audition. It also offers collaborative post-production workflows with Team Projects (Beta), CINEMA 4D Composition Renderer, improved dynamic linking with Character Animator, improved performance, and bug fixes.

Convert Team Project to an Adobe After Effects Project

Enhanced in After Effects CC 2017.0.2 | January 2017

The January 2017 update enables you to convert a Team Project to an Adobe After Effects (.aep) Project.

Converting Team Project to an Adobe After Effects Project

Edit layers with audio in Team Project

Enhanced in After Effects CC 2017.0.2 | January 2017

The Edit > Edit in Adobe Audition command is now available for layers with audio in a Team Project.

Editing layers with audio in a Team Project with Adobe Audition

After Effects CC 2017 | November 2016

Collaborative post-production workflow with Team Projects (Beta)

New in this release of Adobe After Effects CC

Team Projects is a hosted collaboration service for CC enterprise and CC teams users that enables editors to seamlessly collaborate in the editing workflow in real time. Using Team Projects, editors and motion graphics artists can work simultaneously in shared team projects within After Effects CC, Adobe Premiere Pro CC, and Adobe Prelude CC without any additional hardware. Team project data is securely hosted in the cloud and the Media files referenced by your project are saved in local source files or in shared lightweight proxies. Team Projects also includes deep collaboration features such as version control and smart conflict resolution.

New 3D composition renderer: CINEMA 4D

New in this release of Adobe After Effects CC

This release of After Effects includes a new 3D renderer that uses the rendering technology of Maxon's Cinema 4D. You can now quickly create 3D text and logos without any specific hardware, bend planes, and extrude 3D text and shapes directly inside the timeline. The simplified 3D workflow allows you to easily control quality and render settings with a single slider, while using the same camera, lighting and text animation tools.

Performance improvements

New in this release of Adobe After Effects CC

Building on the new high-performance architecture released in the previous version, the latest release improves performance with faster and smarter processing on the GPU, and some under-the-hood features that are going to make things faster all round. Most video footage can now play back in real-time before effects are applied, without waiting for it to cache.

More GPU-accelerated effects

New in this release of Adobe After Effects CC

Performance improvements in this release includes more GPU-acceleration-enabled effects. The following effects are now GPU accelerated: Brightness and Contrast, Find Edges, Hue/Saturation, Mosaic, Glow, Tint, and Invert.

Improved live text templates workflow

New in this release of Adobe After Effects CC

Till the previous release, you could share a live text template with a Premiere Pro user only by providing a complete project file with relevant assets. In this release, you can package a composition along with its assets into a single, easy-to-share file with everything your editor needs. Just save your composition as a text template using the Composition > Export as Text Template option and the editor can then work on the template and assets within Premiere Pro.

Character Animator scenes in After Effects via Dynamic Link

New in this release of Adobe After Effects CC

You can now open a Character Animator scene directly in After Effects or Premiere Pro and keep a live connection to the original scene in Character Animator, via Adobe Dynamic Link. Changes to the scene in Character Animator are reflected automatically when switching back to After Effects or Premiere Pro.

To import a scene via Dynamic Link, Choose File > Import > File, select a Character Animator project file (.chproj), and select the scene within the project that you want to import.

After import, the scene appears in the Project panel as Dynamic Link video footage that you can add to a composition like any other video footage. Character Animator does not need to be open while you use the scene in After Effects.

New project from template

New in this release of Adobe After Effects CC

Now you can create a template with your preferred project settings such as color management and folder structure, and use it as a foundation for every new project you create. This is particularly useful when you collaborate with other users and freelancers as you can make changes to your template and sync the changes through Creative Cloud.

If you enable the New Project Loads Template option under Preferences > New Project and set a template for new projects, everytime you choose File > New > New Project, After Effects creates a new project based on your template. The template project can be an After Effects template project file (.aet), After Effects project file (.aep), or an After Effects XML project file (.aepx).

Freeze on last frame

New in this release of Adobe After Effects CC

You can now freeze the last frame of a layer until the end of the composition using the Freeze on Last Frame command in the Layer > Time menu. After Effects sets time remapping keyframes in the layer and extends the layer duration until the end of the composition.

Set marker duration by dragging

New in this release of Adobe After Effects CC

You can now set the duration of a composition or layer marker by dragging the marker's out point in the Timeline panel. Marker icons now split by half to clearly indicate the marker in point and out point. Dragging a marker in point changes the marker's time, and dragging a marker out point changes the marker's duration.

To set a marker's duration by dragging, hold the Option (macOS) or Alt (Windows) key, then click on the marker icon and drag to the right.

To change the duration of a marker, click and drag the marker out point icon; you do not need to hold Option/Alt.

Note:

You cannot currently simultaneously change the marker time and duration. On a time-reversed layer, the marker in and out points are also time-reversed (marker out points are on the left, marker in points are on the right).

Native export of Avid DNxHD/HR codec QuickTime files

New in this release of Adobe After Effects CC

With After Effects CC 2017, you can export QuickTime files that use the Avid DNxHD and Avid DNxHR codecs, without the Avid codecs package and assistance from QuickTime 7 on Windows, or the Adobe QT32 Server process on macOS.

You can change the DNxHD and DNxHR settings in the QuickTime Options dialog (click the Format Options button in the Output Module dialog). You can select the flavor of DNxHD or DNxHR (HQX, HQ, SQ, etc.) and enable alpha channel encoding.

Note:

Native import of DNxHD and DNxHR codec QuickTime files was part of the previous release of After Effects. Native import of DNxHR does not currently support compressed alpha channels in resolution-free DNxHR flavors (HQX 10-bit, HQ 8-bit, SQ 8-bit, LB 8-bit).

Date and time values in output name templates

New in this release of Adobe After Effects CC

You can now customize name and location templates for output modules with tokens for the date and time. A new Comp Name And Date/Time preset helps you add the date and time in Y-M-D_H-M format to the composition name. You can customize the output name and location with the following:

Property

Token

Day

[dateDay]

Hour

[timeHour]

Minutes

[timeMins]

Month

[dateMonth]

Seconds

[timeSecs]

Timezone

[timezone]

Year

[dateYear]

The date and time values are recorded into the output module when the output module begins rendering. If you use the Duplicate with File Name command on a completed render item or output module, the recorded date and time are copied, but not the date and time tokens.

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